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Disability group creates accessibility guide for devs

The AbleGamers Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group for gamers with disabilities, has published a lengthy accessibility guide to show developers and publishers how to include the proper options in games.

An under-served portion of the community has another tool at its disposal today, thanks to a non-profit organization devoted to advocating for gamers with disabilities. The AbleGamers Foundation has published a 48-page accessibility guide designed to explain the options and control mechanisms required to make video games playable by disabled gamers.

The Includification guide (via Joystiq) addresses a few common questions, cites examples of accessible games, and outlines steps developers and publishers can take. It categorizes each disability (Mobility, Hearing, Visual) into three accessibility tiers. While it concedes that including the highest tier of accessibility options might be prohibitively expensive for developers, it argues that the first two should be easy for any developer to include.

The document states that there are 33 million disabled gamers in the United States alone, arguing that even including a single tier would be "well worth the cost" of development.

"For nearly a decade, our organization has been reaching out to developers convincing them they need to include accessibility for gamers with disabilities," said AbleGamers founder Mark Barlet. "As that message has been increasingly accepted in the video game industry, the question has slowly turned into "Okay, we need to make our games accessible, but how? We believe this document and its companion website will serve to answer any questions a developer might have about the solutions needed to make their games accessible to the disability community."

Steve Watts

Editor-In-Chief

Steve Watts' youthful memories are are a blur of pixels, princesses, castles, and Mega Busters. After writing about games as a pastime for years, he got his first shot at a paid gig at 1UP. He's freelanced for several sites since then, and found a friendly home at Shacknews. His editorial duties include news, reviews, features, and lunatic ravings. He lives in the Baltimore-Washington area with his shockingly understanding wife.